SD:MI “The Creeping Creatures” Review

Following up on a clue from Mr. E, the gang investigates the town of Gatorsberg. But when the engine from the Mystery Machine goes missing, they are forced to stay in a creepy hotal haunted by three gator men.

OK, as far as second episodes of series go, “The Creeping Creatures” is pretty good, but is far from my favorite episode of the series for a few reasons. This episode got a lot of things right. But there were one or two issues that brought this episode down for me. But first, the positive. I think they really got the tone right in this episode. Creepy and dark, but maybe not too creepy and dark. In fact, this is what I’d imagine the original series would be if it were made today. This episode is also one of the episodes where I think they got the perfect blend of that creepy tone and the humor. There is some hilarious lines in here.

And thankfully, The Velma/Shaggy relationship is still tolerable here. Velma hasn’t become a control freak yet.

My one major gripe with this episode is that the villians were too obvious. Yeah, I know Scooby Doo villians are kinda easy to figure out, but this was too obvious even for Scooby.

A couple other random thoughts:

I find it kinda funny that the parents all came up with random excuses for why they couldn’t pick up their kids in the a creepy town in the middle of the night. Score one for bad parenting!

How did Mr. E get the engine out of the Mystery Machine so fast? My theory is that he had it replaced with the Mystery Machine double from episode 25, and when the gang solved the mystery, he switched it back to the real one.